I like this part actually. For all we know (which is nothing), God created us for no other reason except for the fact that he was lonely.

Let me ask you this: Did you ever consider the possibility that you are God, and that everything around you, from your house, your car, your computer, everything living and non-living on the earth, is nothing more than a simulation you created because you were tired of being alone/were bored? Naturally you wiped your mind of many things, since none of us know much about the world, but nevertheless everything around you is a product of your imagination.

No, sorry, when I originally posted the comment I typed he had a 5 in his hand but have since edited it, (I thought he had a 5 in his hand when I first glanced at his hand), it did still feel like a miracle though.

I heard a verifiable story that recently in a card room in a major UK Casino there were 5 Queens in the deck and that all five were revealed in a PLO hand at a showdown. Remarkably the player who won the pot with Queens full was still awarded it. Obviously a bad ruling.

I also played a live PLO cash game a couple of weeks ago where a player found the three of clubs on the floor and it could have been there for a while without anyone knowing.

Your cat is not self-aware.

For somebody who accuses me of not responding to you, you did a rather poor job yourself.

*Not to be a jerk, but I think I'm gonna stop posting ITT. I might return later if I'm bored, but it doesn't seem like any of you are even remotely familiar with Kant, Kierkegaard, or any other existential philosophers, let alone the primary arguments for atheism. It kind of makes the discourse rather futile.

I think that most amputees would prefer having their limb grow back, no matter how nice and life-like their prosthetic may be.

And I guess the hundreds of thousands of amputees living in the third world just haven't prayed hard enough for god to deliver them modern prosthetics.

Well anything is possible but because something is possible does not necessarily mean that it is at all likely.

Again, you are going down the standard religious person's route of not being able to answer a question so trying to deflect from this by asking strange mumbo jumbo obscure questions that are not relevant to an intellectual discussion regarding whether religion is true, false, or somewhere in between.

"God created us for no other reason except for the fact that he was lonely." One really would have to have a very low mental age to accept this as a valid argument for the existence of God.

If he was lonely then surely all he needed to do was create a family for himself, not a strange and imperfect universe and planet.

Who created God? Obviously you can't answer that one either.

And if I bring up the subject of there being scientific evidence that mankind was around after other species no doubt you'll give me the standard answer that the words of the bible can be loosely interpreted in certain areas and should not be taken 100% for their literal meaning.

As I said earlier I respect peoples of all religions and I also stated that religious people tend to conduct themselves in a superior way to those that are not religious.

However, logic tells me that religions are in some way, to differing degrees, an invention of man and therefore to believe in them one needs faith.

Faith is not a bad thing, it is a good thing. But it is faith, not fact.

+1

And some of them may be unfortunate that the correct God (religion), is not readily available in their geographical region.

Let's say for argument's sake that Hinduism is the true relgion. If you suffer a terrible injury in Rwanda you are hardly likely to have access to, or any knowledge of for that matter, of Hinduism, a Hindu place of worship or any Hindu guidance from a fellow human being.

You have said similar things many times and you are completely off base. Laws of physics are differernt than observations of events. Even if they happen all the time. There has to be a logical, mathenmatical basis behind them before they can be called a law. Take the law of the lever. The one that says a fifty pound kid six feet from the middle of a see saw will balance a 100 pound kid three feet away. This could have been predicted soley through thought. (I know this is actually wrong by a super miniscule amount because of the curvature of the universe but that is neither here nor there to this point.) The fact that this has been observed many times is simply confirmation of the law. But its status as a law comes directly from the logical notion that work equals force time distance. It has nothing to do with the fact we see it a lot.

Pwned by Sklansky.

Just to check I'm understanding this correctly... you're saying that even if there were hundreds of documented cases of regrown limbs, it's the fact that they defy biological laws that would still make them all miracles?

It's just a shame it hasn't happened. Once.

Why is it that when pressed on religious questions, theists will state that we can have no idea what gods intentions are, or why he does what he does, and then proceed to list what gods intentions are , and why he does what he does? Cant you see that you are being dishonest in this? When someone questions gods motives, or says maybe god is evil, you say " we cant know god and his motives" But when you want to make a point, you make the claim that "God is x" , or "God is doing this because y"


Well thats nice. But why do you believe this? What proof do you have? What is a soul anyway? how does having a soul make us not animals?

Bipeds have two soles but quadrupeds have four. Boom boom.

Yes and No, he is saying the happening or non happening of an event is irrelevent. What is relevant is whether or not it is possible to happen within the confines of physical laws.


Ex. A statue of the Virgin Mary is seen waving her hand. Is this a miracle? No, because in the confines of the physical laws it is possible for a statute to wave its hands based upon the random moving of atoms within the statue. On the other hand, if a human were to regrow back a limb, this would be a miracle (barring some sort of genetic difference unlike anyother human allowing for said regeneration) because the instructions that would allow for such regeneration does not exist within our DNA.

I wish I didn't take yesterday off from posting. I have some catching up to do.

We can definitely claim that God has never regrown an amputated limb. Presenting a work of fiction showing othewise doesn't address the issue at all.

You seem to know a lot about souls even though you don't believe they exist. Tell me, why can they only be in all species (of animals? plants? bacteria?) or none at all?

This is addressed in other threads on this forum. Probably one or two with a title that hints you off.

I'm not sure I get these objections. I mean, if you have a whole universe, you have to go with some planet. You would question God's choice no matter what it was.

Humans are different from other mammals in that we are human (of the species H. sapien). Was this supposed to be a difficult question?

Are these some of your logical objections against religion? These are rather easily dealt with.

1) Unless you think souls are material things, then you have no problem with heaven never overcrowding. It's not a physical place, it's not somewhere you can go visit by spaceship. Plus, even if it were, the universe is expanding and is possibly infinite in size anyway, so we could still avoid overcrowding if you wanted to force souls and heaven to be physical things.

2) Maybe God is never in a marginal spot and always knows the correct answer. Or maybe he always errs on the side of forgiveness. Or maybe heaven and hell aren't 2 places, but more of a spectrum when everyone is placed where they belong.

3) Oh, well then, when you make the rules, you can make that wrong. Like most of your other points, this isn't a logical objection to Christianity. Instead, it just points out the differences between what an ideal religion would look like in your head and what Christianity claims to be.

Evil is easily explained through the granting of free will. Once you give people the option to act as they choose, some will be bad. It's unfortunate, but not a reason that God can't exist.

Are there actually people who believe the part of your story that I bolded?

Where did he claim that that was an argument for the existence of God? From what I read, it was just a possible explanation of God's actions.

I'm confused. Science says humans were "around after other species." Doesn't the bible say the same thing?

I'm not sure I agree with Sklansky. If there were any legit documented accounts of limb regrowth, we would assume it was allowed by biology and physics and we would work to figure out how it happened. No scientist would assume it's a miracle just because we had previously thought it not possible (for instance, if it turns out that the neurtinos did travel faster than light and it wasn't an experiemental error, then we would all assume that our science was wrong, not that it was a miracle).

I remember reading the tevatron measured neutrinos moving faster than the speed of light before the LHC but the increased velocity was within the margin of error of the experiment so nobody paid any mind. Now if the tevatron measures neutrinos going faster than the speed of light within the margin of error of the experiment like the LHC, then people will start accepting a new law of physics....namely that neutrinos can travel faster than light.

ps when they actually measured the curvature of the universe....it appeared flat(0.5% margin of error).

Doesn't always trying to explain things in physical terms limit you?

How do we know there isn't a spiritual law we haven't uncovered controlling things?

It's just a crass statement imo to say "Why won't God heal amputees?"

It implies we have knowledge we might not have by focusing on a result (an amputated body part) like a scare tactic instead of simply saying I don't know.

This I don't know goes for both parties to the argument.

That miracle of calandra is a documented case of it happening. Now you may not believe it but since it is apparently documented the onus falls on you to show that it didn't happen before you can credibly claim it never happened once.

wow. no

You have made a positive assertion that the documentation is ficition. Now prove your claim.

Oh I know how this will go.

Gangstaman: God has never cured an amputee...if there was there would be documentation of such a case.

Biblethumper: What about the miracle of Calanda?

Gangstaman: That is fiction

Biblethumper: How do you know

Gangstaman: Because God hasn't cured an Amputee therefore the documentation of the miracle of Calanda must be fiction

Biblethumper: How do you know God did not cure an amputee?

Gangstaman: Becuase if God cured an amputee there would be documentation of it.

Consider the following proposition: God has cured one amputee.

There is more evidence to support the veracity of this proposition then there is to say it is false.

Yes, the burden is on him.

While it's on him, maybe atheists want to explain how they triage better than God.

What if God thinks restoring the spirit and spiritual function takes precedence over physical ailments like amputations?

Do you go into a hospital emergency room and tell doctors what injuries to handle first?

So let me see if I have this right. You think this somehow demands an explanation even though:


1. The story itself is questionable, as has already been pointed out here
2. It is an extraordinary claim (thus requiring extrordinary evidence, yet all we have is this one instance of documentation)
3. It is the only act of its kind to ever be documented

This is huge reach on your part. Do you think documented cases of bigfoot sightings, UFO's, and the jersey devil need to be explained away before we disbelieve them? I mean, after all there is more then one case of all of these these.

Spontaneous remissions of cancer happen right now...all the time. People declared terminally ill live the remainder of a normal lifespan. I am sure you would never say that such a thing defies the laws of physics or is an actual miracle. Most believers don't pray for actual miracles....they pray for a sickness to be cured and not for their loved one to rise from the grave.

Nope, you don't know how this will go. In fact, it has already gone in this thread:

Plus, you seem to not trust the story either:

so why are you seemingly holding it such high regard?

The skeptic also notes that the subject was well known as the one legged begger so it is not really fair on his part to claim that direct testimony of the amputation is evidence the claim is false. If everyone at the time the documentation was made accepted as fact that the beggar was one legged what would be the point of obtaining specific testimony for such?

I doubt the story for my own reasons but I still I can't claim that it just didn't happen when there is apparently real documentation that it did happen.

On what basis are are you making the assumption that incomplete evidence is necessarily or even likely false evidence?

A miracle is an event described by those to whom it was told, by people who did not see it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_of_Calanda

Recordings also show that the restored leg was the same one as that which had been amputated two and a half years before, for it could be reidentified through some bruises and scars that were there before the amputation. Also, the hole in the cemetery of the hospital of Zaragoza in which the leg had been buried was excavated and found empty.

So the story is that the leg was resurrected from the ground, two and a half years after it was amputated and buried, reattached itself, and could be "reidentified" through some bruises and scars that were there before the amputation. So the claim is not that he regenerated the leg, it is that it reattached itself. And there is this added attraction (reminiscent of modern chain emails): King Philip IV knelt down before him and kissed the leg.

If the story was in the bible, how many of you would believe it?

Many believers think they have received miracles of healing from God. According to your view they must all be wrong if the miracle they received was received by someone else first.